In my previous chapter I stated that the opponents of reason often begin their case by planting a seed of doubt that reality is not quite as we perceive it, that there is a greater truth hidden from us by our senses, our perception, and our reason. This isn't their only tactic, by any means, but it is a common one. I went on to say that unless some hint or subtle sign of this "greater truth" presented itself, unless there were some wrinkle in the veil of this supposed illusion, then I saw no point in questioning the reality I see before my eyes. How could I question it, even if I wanted to, unless I found some loose thread that I could tug at, or a slim crack that I could slip my fingers between and gain some fragile hold on this greater truth? I even went on to say that should such an opportunity present itself, then reason would still be our best tool for exploring the possibility. Well, it's time to put my money where my mouth is, because it just so happens that we have found a possible wrinkle in the veil.
In the world of quantum physics there is an experiment which has achieved legendary status. It is known as the Double Slit Experiment. It has been performed in a variety of ways, but I will proceed with my explanation on the basis of its most common, general details. A filtering screen is set up with two vertical slits cut out of it, and a backdrop of sort sort is set up behind this screen. If small particles of matter are shot at the filtering screen, then by the laws of probability, they will go through one slit or the other in equal measure and hit the backdrop at the corresponding spot. In this manner, they will reproduce the shape of the two slits on the backdrop. If waves, say of water, are projected at the filter screen, the slits will disrupt the single wavefront into separate wavefronts which interfere with one another. The resulting waves will impact the backdrop at different degrees of intensity corresponding with the interference points created by the slits. This will cause the pattern of the slits to be reproduced against the backdrop not just in one spot directly parallel to the slits, but also at multiple angles to the pair of slits. This creates an image of several slits against the backdrop, radiating outward like waves and gradually tapering off in intensity the further the angle from the original slits in the filter screen. This is called an interference pattern.
Physicists originally set up this apparatus because they wanted to know whether photons, which light is composed of, are particles or waves. If they were particles, there should be a single pair of slits projected against the backdrop. If they were waves, they would get the interference pattern. To their surprise, what they found was a combination of results. Individual photons acted as particles and impacted the backdrop at the single point, but as more and more photons were fired at the slits, their impacts accumulated against the backdrop in an interference pattern, suggesting waves. This was perplexing.
It gets stranger. Eventually physicists moved on to electrons, which they expected would behave like particles since they are one of the vital building blocks of the atoms which all matter is composed of. They again set things up to fire one electron at a time, and again they found the same interference pattern emerging. This suggested that the electron was actually going through both slits at once, and somehow interfering with itself. And this suggested that the same piece of matter could be in two places at once, which of course contradicts everything we think we know about matter.
It gets stranger still. These physicists, being scientists as they were, naturally wanted to probe deeper and find out exactly what was going on here. They figured that if they tracked the electron they could figure out exactly which slit it was actually going through. They figured that it had to only be going through one slit or the other. It seemed impossible for it to go through both. So they set up detectors next to the slits in the filter screen. Astonishingly enough though, once these detectors were in place and the experiment was performed again, a single pair of slits appeared on the backdrop, rather than an interference pattern. In other words, the mere act of observing the electron changed how it behaved. This seemed to contradict basic common sense, which would expect that inanimate physical matter would only react to direct physical interaction, not to the mere fact that it was being looked at.
So what is the human mind to do about this? The mysteries abound here, but they all add up to that loose piece of thread, that wrinkle in the veil, that crack in the impenetrable wall, that suggestion that reality is not quite as we complacently think it is. This is the big opportunity that the opponents of reason have been waiting for, their point of departure from which they can make their exodus from the rational world. Some whimsical Moses need only point the way with his staff and we'll all be free at last from the tyranny of reason.
Hyperbole aside, the opponents of reason actually do like to make great use of this experiment to prove their point. "See", they say, "This proves that reality can't be completely understood by reason, because this experiment completely defies reason." The problem is that this line of thought takes you no where. Declaring that the results of the Double Slit don't "make sense" is equivalent to saying that it's pointless to look for an explanation. The opponents of reason are content with this declaration. It's a call not for further investigation or exploration - that would just be reason trying to justify itself, trying to say, "No, there must be an answer." It's, instead, a call for acceptance. The whimsical Moses isn't leading his people through the opening. He's just going to plop down on a rock and point at it with his staff for the rest of his life, telling everyone who passes by, "See! Look! I told you there was a crack!"
When the advocates of reason say, "No, there must be an answer.", their opponents like to shake their head at the silly human follies of reason spinning their wheels. But this is precisely the attitude needed to take you through the opening in the veil, a spirit of exploration and inquisitiveness. "No, there must be an answer" doesn't mean that we don't accept the results of the Double Slit. It doesn't mean that we're in some kind denial about it. It means that the implications need to be explored, and it's these implications that provide the momentum to propel you into broader horizons of understanding and awareness. They are the breadcrumbs strewn along the path leading through the crack, and reason is the appetite collecting these breadcrumbs. It is the fingers tugging at the loose thread.
For instance, the Double Slit seems to imply that electrons, the building blocks of matter, are aware that they are being observed. Being reasonable does not mean declaring, "That's impossible!" That is not the declaration of a reasonable mind, but rather a closed one. Reason never declares evidence impossible when it is staring it in the face. The fact that it is evidence makes it by definition quite possible, and reason can not deny this. A reasonable mind adapts to new evidence, and considers the need to completely re-evaluate its concept of reality. The truly reasonable mind can never be stumped. The reasonable mind rises to the challenge. If something arises that contradicts the "rational" model of the universe, then it's the model that needs to be reconsidered, not reason. You return to the drawing board. You start over. You figured it out. You use reason to pursue the problem.
The reasonable mind considers this implication of the Double Slit and says, "Suppose it is possible, then what does that tell us about the universe? What does that tell us about matter?" The reasonable mind considers that there may be other possibilities besides the matter knowing it's being observed, but it doesn't completely discard the possibility. It keeps it on hand. It lays out any number of possibilities on the table. It entertains them. It explores their potentials and further implications. It investigates, and through this investigation it peers into the unlimited possibilities beyond the veil. Reason is the indispensable tool of this investigation. Investigation without reason is like listening to music without ears.
Suppose you pursued the issue strictly on the basis of whimsical, imaginary nonsense, supposing it's even possible to separate the imagination completely from reason. Some people have been known to hit upon the solution to problems in dreams, and I admit that there is something to be said for exploring a problem through random free association, rather than following a strict chain of logic. However, this is a matter of methodology, not actuality. Regardless of how you arrive at it, the solution itself will not stand in contradiction of reason. Newton may, according to legend, have been inspired to formulate his theory of gravity by a random apple striking him on the head, but gravity itself is as logical and reasonable as idea gets. Pointing out that the truth may occasionally be stumbled upon by illogical methods, speaks more to the efficient employment of the mind, rather than the reasonableness of the truth discovered. A blindfolded man tripping over a bag of money in the woods does not prove that bags of money are invisible, or even that being blindfolded is the best means of finding them. A wise truth-seeker will keeps their imagination with them as a trusty companion to their reason on their journey. The two may occasionally squabble on the road, but the truth-seeker will point them towards the same destination. A truth stumbled upon by imagination, needs to be verified, considered, and tested with reason, and the two need to work together to explore the further implications.
Consider the revolution of the planets. For thousands of years mankind subscribed to the geocentric theory, the idea that the Earth is the center of the universe, and that all of the other planets, the sun, the moon, and even the stars and the heavens themselves revolve around the Earth. This seemed to be the most obvious conclusion. Standing on Earth and looking out, it seemed to be the natural assumption that it was all moving and we were standing still. But then the crack appeared, the medieval equivalent of the Double Slit. It was called "retrograde motion." Tracking the course of the planets, astronomers noticed that they occasionally double back on their orbits, describing loops in the sky rather than a straight and steady course. I can only imagine how this threw those astronomers for their own loop. Like the possible implications of our electron in the Double Slit, these astronomers might have considered the implication that these planets were consciously self-aware, wandering the sky erratically of their own free will.
Then along came a man name Nicolas Copernicus. A reasonable man, no doubt. He didn't look at these erratic planets and say, "It's impossible!" He didn't plop down like our whimsical Moses and say, "Look, I told you things don't make sense." He sat down with reason, and no doubt with a heavy dose of imagination, both of them working in harmony and tandem, not in contradiction and discord. He ventured beyond the veil of the "reality" that everyone took for granted. He drove off the edge of that two-dimensional sheet of paper, and what he found there was...breath-taking. It completely changed our concept of the universe. And this new view was not a contradiction of reason, in fact, it was more reasonable than its predecessor. It was closer to the truth.
Fast forward a number of years, and we have two more reasonable men, Morley and Michelson, performing an experiment involving light. Their experiment revealed that light travels at a constant rate, regardless of its source, which seemed to contradict what we knew about motion. So along comes another man, Einstein, and he drove clear off the edge of the paper that Copernicus and Newton had printed, and from his new wider perspective he could see that in a sense the geocentric theory and the heliocentric theory were both right. The Earth is revolving in the universe, and the universe is revolving around Earth, depending on how you looked at it. He showed us things that we're still struggling to understand today. We're still coming to terms with the new model of reality he created, and someday someone will drive beyond that, and the process will go on.
In fact, the history of science is a continual expansion beyond the veil, a continual re-evaluation of our understanding of reality. And it pursues this expansion with reason, with testing, with hypothesis and experimentation. Like our reasonable mind, science will never be stumped. It might be thrown for a loop now and then. It might need to regroup and reconsider now and then, but it will always rise to the challenge. It is in the very spirit and nature of science to rise to that challenge. That exactly what science is and exactly what it does.
The opponents of reason complain that reason keeps us confined within a limited view of reality, and yet the field which involves our most practical application of reason to understanding reality is defined by the very fact that it continually probes and tests and redefines those limits. Meanwhile, the field which most tries to understand reality by means other than reason, religion, holds on to the same stale models of reality for thousands of years. Yes, the pot is looking very black in contrast to the kettle today.
Science and reason will always explore the implications of new evidence that seems to shake their foundations. They pursue the truth without fear or prejudice, without reservation or conceit. They harbor no concerns that the truth will ever contradict them, because they make it their very mission to face that truth without bias or agenda, and to bring their own nature's into closer alignment with it. They submit absolute allegiance to the truth, whatever it might be.
Religion, on the other hand, has plenty to be guarded about. They have an agenda, a faith, a preconceived notion of the truth....or as they would have it, a revealed truth. When new evidence is presented to them, they have to consider whether it contradicts their beliefs, which they have a vested interest in preserving. When 100 million year old fossils of dinosaurs show up, they are quick to bury them back in the ground, shouting, "The Earth was made in seven days, seven thousand years ago by a man with a long white beard. Now shut up and get that thing out of my sight!" This may not be a fair representation of all people of religious faith, not even all people of Christian faith, I'll admit, but it is characteristic of many of them. Some of them are more adaptable, adjusting their beliefs to accommodate new scientific evidence, but accommodating science is always a matter of granting latitude to the religious mind-set, and there's always a limit where they'll draw the line. Some are just more liberal about where that line is than others.
There's only so far that they'll stray from their core beliefs, only so far that they'll venture off the edge of the page. When a seam opens up in the veil, they typically aren't too compelled to explore beyond it. Instead they contract a seamstress to try to stitch it up and set their mind at ease. Their vested interest lies in telling the world that they already know what is beyond the veil, that it was revealed to them by a higher power or a means unfathomable to reason. So, you can imagine how embarrassing it would be for them to have the veil stripped away, and for everyone to find out that the world beyond it isn't anything like they said.
But I'm being unfair, right? Religion is searching for a different truth than science. Science is concerned with the crude material world, and religion is searching for a spiritual truth, something higher, something more sacred, more pure and profound. Well, we will explore this matter in the next chapter, and try to give it some careful consideration, and a few re-evaluations.
Whew! Well there went most of my Sunday.
ReplyDeleteYou'll notice that I dated this Jan. 5th so that you can slip a chapter in on the 4th.
I'll give you my spontaneous responses now, and possibly more later.
ReplyDeleteI felt that the experiments with the slits and the photons were not relevant to life as it concerns me. They seemed to relate to preconceptions by the scientists concerned and their inability to absorb their observations into any straightforward theory. I found it less interesting than a murder mystery or a case in law, for example, in which a human element might generate interest.
I also felt that it's in general misleading to think of religion as a quest for truth in the way that science is. Until there was science, someone had to play the role of "wise man" and give answers to the perceived mysteries of life. (In Judaism and Christianity it was thought that the answers were contained in the Bible. By common consent these religions were stuck with what the book said, though there was a certain freedom in interpretation. There was no other choice in the matter, just as there was little choice but to walk or use horses for land travel, for thousands of years.)
Most of us accept the answers of the wisest of our generation, without applying our own tests. What other choice do we have, unless we dedicate our individual lives to becoming experts ourselves. In fact, our daily life is not much affected by these notions of what is Truth, whether they be religious notions or scientific ones.
In my own essay "Birth of a Paradox" I acknowledged that religion, specifically the Catholic Church, has been hostile to any ideas which have challenged its authority. That is a peculiarity of that church. I am not here to speak on behalf of any religion or church. That is to say, I probably have nothing to say in their defence in any situation.
But it is my claim that religions do not exist to seek any kind of truth, though they may set out a creed for their adherents to sign up to as a condition of membership. This is the paraphernalia of identity, to distinguish the true follower from the heretic, insofar as the religion is an organisation or coherent group. In Hinduism, if there is indeed such an entity, there is no concept of membership. You choose your gods to worship and the rituals to worship them with; or more likely, you absorb them from your local culture.
Apart from the paraphernalia, stripped to its essence, what is religion for? I think it is to provide comfort. It's to provide a framework, for example, to the human instincts for prayer and thanksgiving; and provide some consolation against the fear of death.
So I await your next with interest. My next, when I have time to write it, may draw on certain themes expressed by William James in The Varieties of Religious Experience in particular Lecture III, "The Reality of the Unseen". The book may be downloaded from Project Gutenberg.
The domain of science vs. the domain of religion will play a big part in my next chapter, although it will be part of a larger point.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, I had an idea while I was out. I was thinking that perhaps I should move my posts to February, while you keep yours in January. In the interest of keeping things organized. (I doubt I'll exceed 28 chapters...or 29 since 2000 was a leap year. :) ) Then, when we start to figure out how we're going to structure this together as a book, we can make copies of both our posts and post them in March together. How does this sound?
Also, concerning your observation that religion is there to provide comfort. On that we agree. When my father was dying, he believed that he was going to see my cousin who had spent his life in wheelchair and who had died the year before. My father believed that the two of them would be playing baseball together (he was a bit doped up on morphine.) Anyway, I certainly wouldn't have tried to disillusion him, even if he had the capacity at that point to comprehend anything I was saying. I saw the necessity for him to believe that, a necessity that went beyond whether it was true or not (and who am I to say that it wasn't?), an issue of comfort...as you say.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I keep on with my point, and the search for truth, and life as it has to be dealt with by the living (even though we're all dying that long, slow death.) I can appreciate the need for comfort, but I also can't escape the fact that comfort unfortunately doesn't make something the truth.
Made a few minor changes. Mostly grammar and typos.
ReplyDeleteAlso, concerning your remarks about the Double Slit example:
ReplyDeleteFirst, I can understand how it's difficult to see what relevance science in general and things like Double Slit in particular bear on so-called "everyday life." When I hear that researchers at the Large Hadron Collider have discovered some new sub-atomic particle in their never-ending process of smashing atoms, it appears to have virtually no affect on my life what-so-ever and things go on pretty much the same as before. But this is a fairly narrow view of things, confined to the small scale. The ant that collects crumbs of corn chips off my kitchen counter may not see the relevance of a corn farmer plowing his field at planting time, but this is just the myopic ant's failure to see beyond the crumbs and the counter. I don't think I need to illustrate how scientific progress has affected all our lives in the long term. The details of scientific research often seem tedious and pointless. Someone, for instance, may spend their entire career calculating the exact amount of quantum red-shift in the light spectrum of the Andromeda galaxy, and to what end? But suppose there were another ant, living in the same colony with my counter ant, and this ant is spending his life studying the 15th chromosome of corn DNA which will be part of a larger project to create a corn growth hormone. Clearly this would look like a waste of time to the counter ant. Science is obviously working of a much larger scale than our every day lives, but that doesn't mean there is no relations between the two.
Of course, you could point out that the effect science has on our lives is entirely material. It has nothing to do with the quality, the meaning, the passions of our lives. Well, I'll get into that in the next chapter.
Second of all, I just used the Double Slit as an example. The point was how reason deals with the seemingly impossible. If I had used a more "human", more personal example, something that could arise in your own life, the principle would be the same. If a door in your house started randomly opening and closing, seemingly by itself, this would be a cause for investigation. If the man running the fruit stand that you patronized for the last 25 years suddenly fails to recognize you, this would be a cause for investigation. And so on. Dumb examples perhaps, but you get the idea. It doesn't have to be anything so drastic. We're confronted by far more subtle examples all the time.
I'm grateful to you for the additional examples. They are what I call "puzzles".
ReplyDeleteLet me suggest another. I go to a cash machine, put in my credit or debit card and key my PIN. It rejects my PIN and on the third try it swallows up my card. This does affect my life, and now I don't know what to do. I also cannot work out why this can have happened. It frustrates me enormously but yet I know this is a rational world, I trust the bank etc etc; and there will definitely be a rational explanation and sooner or later I will find it and not only that, it is almost certain that normality will be restored and I can return to things like this giving the me the reassuring service I have come to take for granted.
Or let's take an even simpler case. I have lost my keys. Again, there is an explanation, and I know they are somewhere, probably where I left them.
Nevertheless the primitive part of me wonders if I am being punished by something or taught a beneficial lesson by something. That's me, anyhow, and I know I am not the only one who thinks like that.
I also have a kind of trust in prayer, in these situations. It is not a prayer to any God, it is not a prayer in any kind of religious sense, but more like a kind of helplessness, as expressed in the metaphor "I'm on my knees" (begging for mercy). I'm suddenly turned into a child in a mysterious world. I feel bad: without my keys I'm lost. With no chance of money, no credit card, I'm lost. My brain just turns over without a spark in my ego-engine.
It seems to me that I reach the point of surrender. Then it seems to me that I am rescued. I remember where the keys may have been left or dropped. I realise that I have punched in the right PIN but offered the wrong credit card.
The answers have come to me not so much through investigation as through going through an inner process. Apparently.
When I find the solution, I say "Of course!" and I give thanks. Who to? Any god, any angel, it doesn't matter.
These are my confused emotions. I am not able to be more rational.
I wonder what you will have to say to my pathetic state, whether you will advise me to just be rational about it. All I know is that I am rational, but my emotions tell me this is like one of those situations where my survival is threatened. I am like a wild animal which has got its foot caught in a trap. Will I gnaw my leg off to get free? Some animals have been known to do that. It may be a "rational" thing to do. But I don't think they use the power of reason.
ReplyDeleteIn a part of Africa there's a way to catch a monkey. You make a hole in a rock, say, and put some sweets in. the monkey sees you, and when you have gone away he puts his hand in, grabs a bunch of sweets. His fist is now too big to remove his hand, but he doesn't let go of the sweets, even though he could get free that way. So you can go and catch the monkey.
So we see that there's a lack of reasoning power in that monkey.
The way I see it, I'm like that monkey with the addition of a reasoning module. Sometimes the reasoning module allows me to get out of traps. But sometimes my reasoning is defective and I can't solve the puzzle. So I go into the realm of emotion. I can't help it.
So I feel that in some situations reason might be a good thing, if only I could override the emotion and behave like a computer playing chess.
But I can't because I am a human being. You might describe me as stupid. But that is the way I am and I can't help the way I am. I suspect I am like the majority of mankind in this respect. So it is pointless calling them all stupid, and even more pointless calling myself stupid. I have to find a strategy for getting through life, with all my "imperfections" if you want to call them that.
I once woke up after a party. I wasn't sure how I got home, and I found my car keys on top of the refrigerator. I'm not sure how they got there, or what even made me think to look there. I never spent much time dwelling on this mystery, although I suspect alcohol as the main suspect.
ReplyDeleteI've heard of that monkey trap before. I've always been impressed with the ingenious design of it, as well as fascinated by the monkey's inability to properly weigh his priorities.
As for your "pathetic state", well no one ever said that being reasonable was easy, and I doubt that it would do any more good to simply demand that a person "be rational" than it would to tell an agoraphobic person to "get out of the house already!" Reason is an ideal, and like all ideals we're always going to fall somewhere short of a perfect realization of it. Despite everything I say here, even I have an occasional superstitious streak which runs against my better judgment. The fleeting thought that I'm "being punished" as you put it, also crosses my mind. Sometimes, if there's something I'm really anticipating, I'll think that a bus will hit me or a piano will drop out of the sky and crush me before I get to it, as if I should feel guilty about being so complacent towards my own mortality to just assume that I'll survive long enough to enjoy the thing I'm anticipating. I try to brush all this aside as so much nonsense, but no, it's never easy. Still I believe in the ideal, and still strive for it, however imperfectly. I can never hope to be perfect, but I can hope to be better.
ReplyDeleteI'll give you a perfect example of this superstitious streak, as it should be enlightening. At my work, every time there is a thunderstorm, someone invariably expresses a wish that the power will go out. Recently I've been joking that we shouldn't say that, because when we do it never happens. This is joke, but because it seems like the power failures always are unexpected, some small part of me almost believes this, even though I know that it is probably irrational.
ReplyDeleteNow, you'll notice that I say "probably." When dealing with these "puzzles", like the opening door or the missing keys, there's the possibility that 1.) the answer could be something mundane 2.) the answer could be something that will make us completely re-evaluate what we think we know about ourselves and our lives 3.) the answer could be something that would make us reconsider everything we think we know about reality. We're conditioned, especially by movies, to think that reason means to always insist upon a mundane explanation. As I said above, that's not the working of a reasonable mind, but a closed one. The reasonable mind may begin with the mundane explanation, as they often will be the most likely, but they may reach a point where the mundane possibilities are verging on the absurd and either have to be abandoned or clung to irrationally as a reinforcement of our comfort zone.
The possibility exists that somehow, someway, talking about the power going out does in fact keep it from happening. This seems to me to be a very remote possibility, and it would be irrational at this point to jump to that conclusion based on the very limited evidence I possess. But should an overwhelming amount of evidence continue to present itself, the reasonable conclusion would be to accept this truth without bias, fear, or sentiment, and to explore it's deeper implications, to tug at the loose thread in the veil...i.e. what would that tell us about reality, about thought, about the lightening, about matter and energy?
So, of course, I accept that I'm operating to some degree in the dark. With my limited information it's impossible to tell with absolute certainty whether my nagging doubts about my joke is the truth or not, or even whether it's reasonable or not. I can't know with absolute certainty. I accept that. This is just part of why the ideal can never be perfectly realized. We aren't omniscient. But I don't believe that we are blind either. All I can do is my best to soberly consider the likelihood of the possibilities, to keep my eyes open and my mind alert.
I can only speculate that the power failures are rare events, by their very nature unexpected, and so I shouldn't be mystified by the fact that they always seem to surprise us. I can only estimate the likelihood of that explanation. But given what I know, or at least what I believe I know, I have to figure it's pretty damn likely until I have cause to think otherwise.
You have prompted various ideas for new posts, Bryan. But it may be a few days till I can write them.
ReplyDeleteI don’t know why you say “Reason is an ideal”: neither quite what you mean by it, nor what brings you to say it in the first place. But I can guess it is the predominance you give to reason in your own consciousness which leads you to say that reason is an ideal. Reason has taken residence, and proclaims itself king. Just as when I’ve drunk the first beer, it’s the beer in me which asks for another.
ReplyDeleteBut it will be better to answer you in a scientific than in a metaphoric way. Not being myself a scientist, I’ll need to call one in as a witness.
I summon to the witness box Antonio Damasio, professor of Neuroscience, Neurology and Psychology at the University of Southern California. He’s the author of The Feeling of What Happens: body emotion and the making of consciousness, and also Descartes’ Error: emotion, reason and the human brain. It took me a long time to get through these books. Taken together, they provide a detailed argument against your assertion that “Reason is an ideal”: an argument which would take me a good while to condense into a post here.
But I can refer you to this blog post I wrote 3 years ago, which discusses the book in the context of its core theme: how Phineas Gage’s famous accident with gunpowder, a crowbar and his own skull allows us to understand better how we think, and how emotion is crucial to thought.
I admit that saying "reason is an ideal" is confusing, perhaps even misleading. It's because of a fumbling on my part to put what I mean into words. Hopefully I'll make things clearer as I go along.
ReplyDeleteFor now, I'll keep it brief as I'm about to go to bed. "Reason" can mean two things. First we have the mental faculty, with its possible imperfections as Descartes and your neuroscientist would no doubt explain. But then we have "reason" as an...approach to the world and the information we have about it, a statement about our relationship with it, and it with us. I know this still doesn't sound very clear, and all I can say is "bear with me." At this stage, it may seem odd to use "reason" in this 2nd sense, especially since you tend to equate it with the first, but I don't know what else to call it. Imagine if there was only one word for "legs" and "walking." You're telling me about the limitations of legs; I'm trying to explain the virtues of walking, and yet we're hung up on a common word like a swinging door. As I said, bear with me.
I see as well that you've started a new chapter. I'll check it out when I wake up.
I can't help but add one more thing though.
ReplyDeleteI'm not inventing this 2nd sense; I'm not calling it "reason" because of some personal idiosyncrasy or hang-up on terminology or because the word has taken some manic grip on my brain like an alcohol addiction. It's common usage. When someone tells their friend to "listen to reason", what do they mean? They're not talking about the mismatched wiring of either one of their brains. They're not even talking about the logic of their own particular position. It's true, of course, when someone says this it's under the assumption that their position is the "reasonable" one, but this just goes to show that they are making a claim that their position holds up against a certain criteria, a certain ideal called "reason."
Your position, if I understand correctly, is a refusal to see this criteria as anything but a reflection of our conceit. I'll have to think about this.
In the meantime, I'll give you something to consider in return. If the human race were wiped off the face of the Earth, would 2 + 2 still equal 4?
You make extremely interesting points as ever, and I look forward to your next. (My latest, I ought to add, is a reprint of that one I posted on Wayfarer three years ago, as linked above.)
ReplyDeleteBut I do need to correct you on the way you represent my position.
I don’t see the mental faculty of reason as having any particular imperfections, though the way evolution works, nothing is perfect, everything just happened that way. What I see, and what Damasio also sees from a scientific point of view, is that reason does not act alone. We can set up reason as our ideal, but that is very similar to setting up the Creator of the Universe as all-loving, all-powerful etc. That is, it’s a wish projection.
I agree that it’s common usage to say “listen to reason”. We know exactly what we mean by that. But common usage is not scientific. Nor is common usage a fair representation of any particular religious doctrine (theology having its own kind of abstract logic).
I agree also that in people’s minds is an ideal called reason. Yes, it exists in the form of logic, mathematics, deduction and so forth. But reason is an abstract conception, allied to the mathematics which includes the expression 2+2=4. In their abstract form, we may say that logic and mathematics have their own perfection. And if the human race were wiped off the face of the earth there would be no one to think that thought. A certain flower would still have five petals, but it does not think “five”. It just does what it does, in its own wonderful way.
To understand our different viewpoints we’ll need to be more precise than common usage and analyse the constituent parts of consciousness, and the human sense of self. Once we go there, we are not talking about abstract concepts but the actual way we are made, and the biological mechanisms from which consciousness arises.
I’m fully aware of the everyday abstract ideal of reason, and accept that if it’s the supreme achievement of humanity, then atheism is the way to go.
But I see reason as a tool, almost a weapon, comparable with other specialised developments in other animals. It is only a part of consciousness and it doesn’t work well on its own as an ideal image of consciousness.
So in a way, I agree with you that I see it as a conceit. Not vanity but "something that is conceived in the mind; a thought; idea:". We have the idea of reason. But it doesn't correspond to the way we operate. I wouldn't say that the way we operate is "imperfect", as if it could theoretically be perfected. It just is the way it is.
Certain female spiders eat their male partners after sexual intercourse, or perhaps during. That is not an imperfection of nature. It is the way it is. Same with our faculty of reason, which we may idealise as an alternative to religion.
I agree that reason, as a faculty, does not act alone, and requires an emotional element. The fact the Gage was unable to make sensible decisions after having the emotional centers of his brain damaged doesn't surprise me in the least. You'll recall even in my own artificial intelligence post that I made a case that autonomous action was impossible without emotional motivation. I'm sure there's also an indispensable emotional element involved in the operation of our reason as well. My plan here is not just to advocate reason, but also to address some misconceptions about it. I think a lot of people's problems with it are due to these misconceptions. For instance, the "reason means an insistence on mundane explanations" mentioned above. There are plenty of "reasonable" people who make this make this mistake as well. They go, "I don't believe in [such and such]; I'm a reasonable person." I don't think being reasonable means adhering to a fixed perspective and suffering under the illusion of the infallibility of this perspective. I think of being reasonable as a technique, or a tool as you put it. It is something adaptable, changing. It makes no assumptions, except perhaps one. The possibility exists that even this assumption could be wrong, and this leads to what I'll call "The Vanishing Point" where the rational and the irrational blend on the horizon of possibility. That will probably be the title of my final chapter and also where I'm headed with this.
ReplyDeleteAs for the "common usage" thing, I didn't mean that as proof of my position. I was just making the point that I wasn't just making the idea up out of thin air.
You never weighed in on my suggestion to move my posts to February, but I think I'm going to go ahead and do it anyway.
Erm, I did move your posts to February!
ReplyDeleteI look forward to the debunking of common misconceptions about reason.
But let me ask you a bare-faced rude question at this point.
What is your deep-down feeling about Reason? Is it a useful tool, or is it a substitute for God?
I see a few signs of the latter already: separating the true doctrine from the heresies; defending the true doctrine against all comers ...
Wow. I didn't even notice that.
ReplyDeleteAs for my "deep-down feeling about Reason", I think my next post will shed some light on that. If not, ask me again and I'll give it some serious thought.